# Known vs Jira

**Jira is Atlassian's configurable tracker for work items, built for teams that need custom workflows, permissions and planning at scale. Known is a shared model of your company, where issues are one kind of record next to your customers, decisions and conversations.** Choose Jira for deep configuration, portfolio planning and the Atlassian suite. Choose Known when a small team and its agents need issues that carry their context.

Facts about Jira come from Atlassian's own docs and pricing page, read on 27 October 2026.

## When to choose Jira

- You need custom workflows, work types and fields per space, with permission schemes and item-level security.
- You plan across teams: Jira's Plans (Premium) adds capacity planning, scenarios and cross-project dependencies.
- You're regulated or large: approvals, sandboxes, uptime SLAs and audit logs.
- You already use Confluence or Jira Service Management.
- You want agents in the tracker: Jira lets you assign work items to Rovo or MCP agents and keeps their changes in the item's history.

## When to choose Known

- Your agents need the context around a work item: the customer, the decision, the last call. In Known these are records linked to the issue; in Jira they're in other tools.
- You're a small team and want a model you define in minutes, not a tracker to administer.
- You track more than software work in one place: sales, a fundraise, hiring, each a table with a schema you write.
- You want every change versioned with who made it, person or agent, on every plan.

## Side by side

| | Jira | Known |
|---|---|---|
| What an issue is | A work item in a space | A record in a table you define |
| Configuration | Workflows, work types, fields, screens, schemes | A JSON Schema per table, and the table's page for rules |
| Views | Backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar, summary | Table (sort and filter), record pages, backlinks; no board |
| Planning | Sprints on boards; Plans on Premium | None built in |
| GitHub and GitLab | Development panel, Smart Commits, automation | None built in; agents add commit and deploy links |
| Notifications | Notification schemes, email, Slack | None |
| Agents | Rovo MCP server (Standard and up; delete and admin tools off until enabled); agents assignable to work items | MCP server for the whole wiki; agents act as the person who connected them |
| History | Work-item history; user-activity audit log on Enterprise | Every record versioned with who changed it, on every plan |
| Export | CSV and Excel up to 10,000 items per export; full site backup | Records as JSON over the CLI and API |

## Using both

Keep sprints and boards in Jira and the context in Known. Connect both MCP servers to your agent; ask it to read the related customer and decision in Known before it works a Jira item, and to record the outcome in Known when it's done.

## Moving from Jira

Export the work items to CSV from a search (up to 10,000 per export; split larger sets with JQL). Give the CSV to an agent connected to Known and ask it to create one record per row in your issues table, following the table's schema. See [Set up issue tracking in Known](https://known.info/docs/guides/how-to/issue-tracking).

## Sources

Atlassian: [Jira pricing and plans](https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing), [Rovo MCP server](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/rovo-mcp/), [supported tools](https://support.atlassian.com/atlassian-rovo-mcp-server/docs/supported-tools/), [agents in Jira](https://www.atlassian.com/blog/rovo/ai-agents-in-jira), [Smart Commits](https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/process-issues-with-smart-commits/), [notification schemes](https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-notification-schemes/), [exporting over 10,000 items](https://support.atlassian.com/jira/kb/export-over-10-000-work-items-in-jira-cloud/). Read 27 October 2026.